


A Time for Good Men

by nookienostradamus



Series: The Hearts of Men [3]
Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, Clumsy Admission of Feelings, Crying, Daddy Issues, Denial, Drunkenness, Fantasizing, Grief, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Hangover, Hilarious Antique Slang, Illness, Injury, John is getting there, Laszlo is woke, Literary References, Longing, Love, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Peril, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Philosophy, Psychology, Romantic Tension, Self-Harm, Surprise Darwinism!, canon character death, facing mortality, medical treatment, mentions of child abuse, mentions of drug use, mentions of sexual abuse, mild pining, period-typical misogyny, pushing away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 00:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14705408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/pseuds/nookienostradamus
Summary: As the team's foray into the twisted world of the killer deepens, so does John's feeling for Laszlo. Following a dark trail that leads them all over the Northeast, John and Laszlo grapple with attraction and what is best for the investigation. After unsettling discoveries are made and an unexpected loss threatens to tear the partnership asunder, both men must come to terms with the extent of their need for one another...and just how similar they might be to the child-killing monster they seek.





	A Time for Good Men

**Author's Note:**

> Largely a "missing scene" piece - major points of action are mentioned, though most of the story centers around John and Laszlo coming to grips with their desires. Follows the arc of the show/book. Any deviation is solely my own.
> 
> See end notes for a brief glossary of 19th century slang used in the piece.

As loath as John had been to accept his unceremonious booting from the house that night, it had nearly been worth it to watch Laszlo leap up from the bed—first to hastily button his trousers then to scrub his spend from the rug using his waistcoat. How that article might be surreptitiously cleaned now that it bore its damning evidence John did not care to speculate.

It had been difficult enough to re-fasten his drawers over the cooling mass of fluid on his own belly. To blushingly tip his hat to Mary as they passed, the flesh of his hand still imbued with the singular scent of manhood. On the journey home, he’d clutched that same hand over the sticky spot on his stomach like an expectant mother, or a suitor concealing the kitten he’d bought for his paramour.

Later, in his bath, John mused that Laszlo would not be the sort of lover to accept gifts. The very line of thinking was ridiculous, of course. Laszlo had everything he could want—or the means to get it. And one hasty, frustrated tug-off did not a lover make. Even if it did, theirs was not the type of courtship to be shown publicly. Or known. Or even called “courtship.” However pure in intent, a love affair between two men was sullied by automatic association with the base and furtive transactions of the night. Just the same as there were boy-whores in the poorer quadrants, so John knew there to be young men, with no pretense to femininity, who served the unspoken needs of society’s leaders, its bachelors—its husbands, even.

If they were so inclined.

These plied their trade through networks and not in any disorderly house: by word of mouth and discreet calling-cards...and often for sizable sums.

Even as a man of means, John had never engaged those services simply because he had never felt the urge to take part in sexual intimacy with a man until Laszlo. Were his taste in women a guide-line, by all rights he should be drawn to strapping lads: big in chest and bicep and pearly-pink with health. Like Roosevelt (what a laugh!) or—Heaven forbid—Wissler. Not a surly and hollow-chested alienist whose chief complaint was dragging about his Christ-Almighty-huge brain.

And yet, there he was in the steaming tub, watching the evidence of that attraction melt away into the cloudy water. John wanted to bottle the scent of the nape of Laszlo’s neck and soak a handkerchief in it as the ladies did with their rose-water cloths. He wanted to suck on each of Laszlo’s slim fingers. He wanted to…

Instead of pursuing that train of thought, John shook his head and pulled the drain-plug. No use working himself up for the sake of a thing that may never happen—or even be discussed—again. These considerations did not stop him, though, from once again sniffing the hand that had touched Laszlo’s most intimate places, remembering the sensation of giving pleasure, of the flesh itself: soft and rigid at once.

Disappointingly, it smelled of soap.

*

Despite having steeled himself for any possible reaction, John was still let down when Laszlo responded with diffidence toward him at the next day’s gathering in Number 808. A glance, a terse nod. John cleared his throat and sat at his accustomed desk, determined not to react outwardly or otherwise.

The Doctor had a brief smile for Sara, but John suspected that was given in continued pursuit of a peaceful détente. Mary was not there but it had to be speculated that knowing she _could_ attend was satisfaction enough.

Luckily, John was pried from his inner thoughts by the promise of momentum in the case. Sara’s findings—specifically the discovery of the soldier named Rudolf Bunzl—sparked hope within the breasts of those listening. And it no doubt awakened the nebulous feeling of _closing in_. John had felt it many a time while drawing nearer to the meat of a story when following a lead. And more than once knowing his flattery, “accidental” touches, and glances brought him that much closer to a woman’s bed.

The rudiments of flirtation could not possibly work on Laszlo. _Or could they?_ The self-important might be swayed by flattery at times. John stopped himself at the last minute from soundly rapping his own temple with the heel of his hand to clear his addled brain. Instead, he just shook his head.

“Falling asleep, Mister Moore?” Sara asked. There was a thin edge of her usual teasing in the tone.

“Barely able to believe it, more like,” answered John. “We’re so close.”

_So close._ He _did_ try to think of the killer.

Before they parted ways, it was decided at last that Laszlo, rather than Sara, should travel with John to Washington. There was simply no denying that his contacts in the profession would allow them greater access to the medical system. Sara was smart enough to see it and gracious enough to admit it, too.

Laszlo left almost at once after this was agreed, in haste to secure two tickets for the earliest train that following morning. He told John in curt tones that he would ring his grandmother’s house once the timing was settled, leaving John with the sole unpleasant option of returning home and waiting by the telephone.

Gregarious by nature, John had never nurtured—nor cared to—the ability to pass time in silence by himself. Even if with music on the gramophone, solitude dredged up not only memories but the doubts and condemnations attached to them, ringing loud like bells in his head. How Laszlo managed to while away hour after quiet hour in his study and not go barking mad was a great mystery. Did the rage-twisted face of his father not rise up in his mind as did the face of John’s brother, quivering and white under the lapping lake waves?

He shoved the thought violently away. At least there was whisky for company.

*

Having given up and turned in early, John was at least refreshed by sleep when he met Laszlo at the station at a quarter past seven the next morning. The Doctor looked less invigorated. His skin was pale and there seemed to be purplish shadows underneath his eyes, though it might have been a trick of the morning light.

As they took strong coffee that shuddered with the train’s rhythmic slide over the ties, Laszlo confessed the reason for his unease: he had been accosted by Cyrus’s niece the night before as he paid a visit to his friend. Prior to this, John had not been aware that Cyrus even had family in the area. Nor had he known that Laszlo had put up the funds for the girl’s schooling.

She was to be a nurse, Laszlo said, absently swirling the cold dregs of the coffee. He had raised the cup almost to his lips and then lowered it nearly to the saucer four or five times thus far. He described the niece, a Miss Joanna Crawford, as “impeccably put together, with a rather cherubic aspect.” It became clear as he spoke, however, that the girl had a rather severe demeanor—at least in her dealings with Laszlo.

“Miss Crawford blames me,” he said.

John frowned. A budding branch whipped briefly against the window of the dining-carriage. “For her uncle’s injury? Does she think the man has no agency? He was glad to be on that roof-top.”

“She believes he has less choice that he thinks he does.” At last, the cup was set down. “That in his sub-conscious he is so beholden to me for his rescue that he’ll follow on my heels to Hell.”

Scoffing, John said, “You’re possibly the only man in the city who wouldn’t treat Cyrus as inferior.”

Laszlo gave a long sigh, as a man might after a good meal. But it only caved in his chest and made his shoulders sag. “To Miss Crawford’s mind, it is I who is treating him as most inferior of all. Because I hold the threat of sending him back to the streets over his head.” He grimaced then as if he had drunk the cold, gritty coffee. “I would never even hint at such a thing. Yet she doesn’t believe it has to be said to be true.”

“She’s given you no way to win. I feel sorry for someone so untrustful of her fellow man.”

Laszlo looked out the window at the sun-dappled fields that passed. “Some things only time can mend,” he said. “For that, though, she would need to see the way Cyrus and I interact. And that is nothing she wants a part of.”

John rubbed at a chin that these days seemed to acquire new stubble as quickly as young corn-stalks rose in the fields. It had been thirty years since the War ended—nearly all of his life—but things were not so far removed from the horror of human enslavement that Joanna Crawford could trust the motives of a race that still too often fought to keep the other subordinate. He kept quiet on that particular thought. Instead, he offered: “If I were Cyrus, I think I’d be offended that she wouldn’t trust my word on the matter.”

“You know how the young are,” countered Laszlo. “Their idealism is not yet tempered. They’re not content to be told things, but need to observe and to experience.” He paused, a ghost of a smile touching his mouth. “Young people would make excellent scientists...if only their patience matched their motivation.”

Something about this line of conversation caused John’s gut to seize up painfully. It took two mouthfuls of the lukewarm coffee for the realization to strike. Having this sort of discussion with Laszlo, and agreeing with him, meant only one thing. Neither Laszlo, forty-one, nor he himself at age thirty-nine could call themselves young. He gulped down rising bile. How long before he was a laughingstock? Not the glib-tongued star of the evening at social gatherings, but the sad, lonely man in the corner. His jacket more rumpled and his nose redder with every year that he turned to drink to feel alive again.

Ever-observant, even when exhausted, Laszlo noticed his sudden turn. “Is the food not sitting well with you, John?”

He winced. “No, I’m fine. Only—” he paused, racking his brain. “Only sorry you’ve been put in such a position.”

He was rewarded for the lie with a warm look. “At least it’s more comfortable than the stand-off with Sara was. But I appreciate your concern.” Laszlo rested his bearded chin in the cup of his palm. “If Miss Crawford is bound and determined to pay back the expenses for her schooling as she says she is, I hope that she at least knows every penny of it will go to the care of children at the Institute.”

The tack of the conversation had drawn a shadow over John’s mood. He thought of Joseph—where he might have slept. Where he might be waking up. If he could be convinced to trade the streets for uniforms and lesson schedules. He wouldn’t need to sell himself to perverse men, or beasts like their boy-murderer.

John knew the mind of a boy well enough to expect refusal.

And he was just long enough removed from boyhood to be frightened.

*

The rest of the trip passed in a haze. Sunlight warmed the carriages enough that the air grew thick. Windows were lowered and the overhead fans began to creak on their pulleys. A hay-scented breeze spilled inside, where John could take it in and be grateful for the noise of the tracks, which made conversation impossible.

Exchanging words as the train pulled into the capital’s grand Union Station, John and Laszlo agreed to part ways from there, with the former headed toward the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the latter to the Government Hospital.

There was little of use at Indian Affairs. John’s interest was piqued only by an Indian attack in New Paltz, New York—supposedly the farthest east that the Indians had come for decades. Meeting later with Laszlo, he found his friend had also found a dead end.

It seemed to John as Laszlo informed him the soldier Bunzl was dead that they were running in circles around the truth but couldn’t veer off the track to get to the heart of it. Like Hector dragging Achilles around the walls of Troy.  _Or was it the other way ‘round?_

John’s ears pricked up like a hound’s when he heard New Paltz mentioned. He cut in as Laszlo continued to speak, asking him to repeat what he’d said. There, in a wide public square, the pieces began to click into place like a rail-car linking up. The hospital had treated a soldier named John Beecham, born in New Paltz. There might have been no other connection outside of Beecham’s birthplace, had not a doctor told Laszlo that the soldier had suffered from a hideous facial tic that made it difficult for him to speak. It had been the subject of much quiet ridicule, even as he convalesced. Not a deformity, as was first speculated, but a good enough stand-in to serve their purposes.

Genuine excitement for the state of the case—not the pining for Laszlo’s attentions that had substituted it—began to rise within John. From the set of Laszlo’s jaw, his darting eyes, it was clear he felt the momentum building, as well.

Together then, they dashed back to the Indian Affairs building, so startling the unhelpful clerk that he sprang to action out of sheer contagious fervor. The surname of the murdered family in New Paltz was Dury: father, mother, and two sons. The younger boy, Japheth, was thought to have been carried off by the Indians.

The elder brother, Adam, survived the massacre, which Laszlo volunteered was no accident. “Perhaps he was treated kindly by his brother,” he said. “Who may well have been the only one.”

The clerk was no doubt scandalized, John thought, to hear two strange men banter back and forth about whether the young son had butchered his parents with enough care to style the gruesome crime after Indians of the plains.

A path now blazed before them as they stepped out into the oncoming evening. Unfortunately, it was far too late to find a departing train to Boston, much less the carriage that would take them inland to the borough of Newton.

Laszlo’s stance was tight, each muscle active as though he’d been electrified by touching a bare wire.

John, with hands on Laszlo’s tense shoulders, suggested they take supper in a low-profile public house and find somewhere to bed down for the night.

Dinner was modest to say the least. John nearly cracked a tooth on the stale soda bread served alongside their stew. Laszlo only nodded at his complaint, wrapping his own inedible chunk in his dinner napkin.

They retired to an inn a few streets down, with Laszlo politely and softly requesting to know the manufacture of the bed-linens before the rooms were secured. As was typical in Laszlo’s company, there was no thought of John putting their accommodations on his grandmother’s account. Laszlo settled up with the passing of a card to the clerk.

He then asked for the use of the telephone, ringing up the line at Number 808 where Sara was sure to be. Though John could hear little from his place outside the alcove, Laszlo had obviously reached someone there.

The porter had already taken their bags up, so John stood tapping the toe of his brogue, itchy hands stuffed in his trouser-pockets.

Laszlo emerged soon enough, having spoken both to Sara and to Marcus Isaacson. The detective and his brother had needed little persuading to get a train to the current post of Beecham’s former commander. Steadfast, Sara would hold down the fort, such as it was. Laszlo needed say nothing at all to get across to John that she remained unhappy with this _status quo_.

Their duties done for the night, a hopper led them to the second floor of the inn. John went with heavy steps, feeling very acutely Laszlo’s disappointment as precious time seemed to barrel past them like a runaway engine.

Reluctant to be on his own, John followed like a valet into Laszlo’s room, the right-most of two behind identical doors. He closed this door behind him as Laszlo pulled open the curtains—less to obtain a view and more to see if they’d been dusted of late. Satisfied with the state of the drapery, Laszlo poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the wash-stand and turned to lean back against it, allowing a brief sigh.

“How do you feel?” he asked. It was an uncharacteristic display of concern from him, made entirely—John suspected—to fill the tense space between them with words.

John scrubbed at his face. “A bit overwhelmed.”

“Quite a lot to take in.” Laszlo looked down at his still-shod feet.

For the first time, and rather surprisingly, John reflected on the shape of Laszlo’s feet: slim and delicate like his hands, high-arched, pale. Dear _God_ , but he was in deep. Gone soppy over the human body’s least sensual appendages. He rubbed his eyes and breathed out a heavy sigh.

In turn, Laszlo shuffled, looking toward the door. “Your room is acceptable?” he asked, knowing full well John hadn’t so much as tried the lock one door over.

John only stared, taking in the sight of the man there from top to toe: his slicked hair, fingers drumming absently against the wooden basin stand. A scuff on the toe of his polished shoe. With his suit suddenly stifling, John pulled at the collar. A slice of moon had risen and was tracing a path through the window’s quavering panes.

Laszlo cleared his throat and pushed off from the wash-stand with his good hand. He walked toward the door with slow, clicking steps.

John suspected he was about to be banished. He clenched his teeth. “To sleep, then? What time is the first train tomorrow?”

Offering a brief and mirthless smile, Laszlo said, “Eight.”

John, too, moved away from the wall and toward the door, resigned. He stopped with his fingers resting lightly on the handle. “I’ll let you know if my accommodations are up to snuff?”

“Yes, ah. Do.”

“Laszlo,” John spoke low, soft.

“John...don’t.”

John fairly growled his frustration. “Don’t what? Talk with you?”

For a moment, Laszlo’s gaze flickered up and met John’s, then fell again. “Is talking what you want to do?”

“I—” he began. “I don’t know what I want.” John then raised a finger and shook it in Laszlo’s face. “And I very much doubt you do, either.”

His lips moving soundlessly, Laszlo searched for words. It was as awkward to watch as it must have felt. “It isn’t...what I _want_. It’s what must be done.”

“Those could be the same,” said John. “At least tonight. We can’t—we can’t petition the railroad, or even _God_ , to make the train arrive tonight. We’re here. Nowhere else.”

“Meaning we should while away our spare hours—”

He effectively stopped speaking, then, because John had lunged forward and pressed his mouth against Laszlo’s. The latter attempted to keep talking for a moment or two and then lapsed into shocked silence.

The slight but perceptible sensation of his tense mouth relaxing sent fervent desire spiraling down into John’s belly. He ran the tip of his tongue over the seam of Laszlo’s lips.

Laszlo made a brief, confused noise.

It only served to fuel the fire. John kissed the corner of his mouth, skimmed lips over the beard that still felt strange brushing his face, and nuzzled with relish into the fragrant hollow below Laszlo’s jaw bone. At the same time, he rucked up Laszlo’s waistcoat, searching with eager fingers for the fastenings of his trousers.

“Please,” John heard close to his ear, the word laden with some emotion he couldn’t place. He latched on with his teeth, lightly, to the skin of Laszlo’s neck, sucking it between them—to stimulate but not to bruise. _This time_. A carelessly handled trouser-button popped off and skittered away across the floor planks.

Laszlo sucked in a great breath when John’s hand slid over his drawers.

“Ask me to stop,” John said. He ran the fingers of his free hand into Laszlo’s hair, clutching at the fine strands. “Tell me to stop.”

If he tried to speak, the words were swept away when John grasped his erection firmly within the warm confines of the flannel.

A muffled knock sounded, startling John until he realized its source was Laszlo’s skull contacting the wall behind him. His eyes were closed, coal-black lashes fanned across his cheeks and his lips parted.

“I tried not to think about this,” John whispered. “But…” The words sounded as plaintive and ridiculous as the suitor’s plea in a pantomime, but he was helpless against it. Cheeks burning, he pressed his lips to the corner of Laszlo’s mouth once again. He felt desperate enough for the contact, the heated proximity, that he craved any touch in return—even a push away, a knee to the groin.

There was no reply, and, with Laszlo’s cock rapidly hardening in his grip, John suspected no rebuff was forthcoming, either. Laszlo merely sagged and allowed John to stroke him. The limited movement was apparently enough. Short breaths fell from his lips, almost in perfect time with the rhythm of the hand that touched him.

Although his wrist was acquiring an exquisite cramp from the angle and range, John had no intention of stopping, even in the presence of discomfort. His singular want burned more ferociously than his muscles did—listening to Laszlo’s quiet, rushed breathing and feeling his arousal.

Then Laszlo placed a hand on his shoulder, fingers tightening once, twice, without rhythm. “John,” he said in a voice as feeble and filled with surrender as had ever been heard from him.

There, for the first time, a prickle of regret at his rashness swept over John. But the hand still gripped his shoulder, Laszlo now pushing his hips into the touch, helpless. “Are you close?” John asked.

Laszlo squeezed his eyes shut, letting his head impact the wall again. “Yes.”

“Good.” John kissed his cheek, caught the odor of sharp sweat rising from beneath his collar. “You can’t imagine, Laszlo...all of my thoughts—”

“Now,” Laszlo breathed. His jaw dropped.

John seized on that opportunity, kissing the slack lips again, finally tasting Laszlo’s mouth: the lingering sweetness of after-dinner brandy, a stale tinge from taking in the trapped air of the room. Against his palm came the erratic and involuntary pulsing that signaled climax. Laszlo’s body surged upward so violently their teeth knocked together.

Once the dull ring of pain subsided, John realized that Laszlo had abandoned his passivity, if only for a second. He returned John’s kisses with a hunger that stole away any finesse. John was far too ecstatic to complain, groaning his approval. All the while, warm fluid spilled into his hand, easing his final strokes as Laszlo spent himself fully.

For a brief time, both men stood conjoined, breathing air heavily scented with the evidence of sexual congress.

Then, with his good hand, Laszlo gripped John’s forearm where it emerged from his trousers with a strength John might have thought him incapable of producing. Laszlo’s eyes were still shut tight. “Get out.” It was a fierce whisper.

John drew back to see him bare his teeth like a threatened animal. He tried to withdraw his hand but it stuck in the waist-band of the drawers.

Laszlo twisted away and John pulled free, by instinct brushing his soiled palm against his trouser-leg.

“Did you not hear me?” Laszlo asked, his voice much louder now. His eyes were shining and alive with menace. “Get out!”

Confusion slowed John’s movement. “I thought you were—”

Holding up his left hand while pulling ineffectually at his disordered trousers with the weaker one, Laszlo said, “Leave, John. I don’t want to hear another word. I don’t want to see your face. In fact, I want to forget that you exist entirely. At least until morning.”

A huff of disbelief. “Laszlo—”

He merely pointed toward the door, turning his head to look toward the window where the moon still slid upward on its track.

With a heavy sigh, unrequited arousal boiling within him, John waited one more moment, but it seemed the room had gone chill and unwelcoming as a winter storm. Gritting his teeth hard enough that they squealed, he stalked toward the door, threw it open and—once in the cool and silent hallway—slammed it closed with bone-rattling force.

*

The next morning it was John’s turn to be rumpled and sleep-deprived on the train platform. This time, however, the blame lay squarely with his traveling companion. Laszlo was no fool; John was certain he could sense the begrudging gaze directed toward him. As a result, he kept to himself, absorbed in papers and journals that likely took up a good deal of the space in his plain leather satchel. By mid-morning, soothing and buttery sunlight streamed through the car window, falling like a veil over John’s face. No sooner had he leaned his head against the glass than he was asleep.

To his great shock, when he woke he found that he’d slept through the brief stay-over in Grand Central and that the engine was now puffing its way along the coast toward New Haven.

At some point during John’s unconsciousness, Laszlo had excused himself to the dining car. This John knew because the announcement of his intent was scrawled on the back of a monograph in his small, neat hand.

 

_John, Have gone for breakfast. Needed coffee lest I sleep too. Welcome to join.  
-L._

 

For the hundredth time at least, John felt pacified and even flattered, much in spite of himself. Laszlo had never in the past allowed bad blood between them to get in the way of courtesy. John turned the monograph over.

 

_On Organic Selection in the Child_  
J _ames M. Baldwin_  
_Princeton Univ., New Jersey_   
  


What “organic selection” might be, he couldn’t begin to guess. He did know that his stomach had begun to protest its unfed state and his woozy brain begged for coffee. After picking his careful way toward the dining car at the head of the train, he found Laszlo absorbed in another paper, the remains of a hearty breakfast still spread before him. John’s mouth watered upon seeing the biscuit crumbs and ramekin of conserve. Feeling bold and feisty despite his weak state, he dipped his finger into the ramekin and brought it up to his mouth.

“Apricot,” he said.

Laszlo looked up. “With ginger.”

As he said the words, the flavor of the spice burst across John’s palate, making him feel marginally more refreshed. He took a seat across the table.

Ever subtly polite, Laszlo set aside his reading material.

“Any chance of the biscuits still being hot?” John asked.

Laszlo inclined his chin. “Slim. There should be much of the conserve left over, though. It didn’t seem to be very popular with my fellow diners.”

Now, as the day advanced, only one other man sat in the car with them. Of him, John could only see rough fingers around the pages of the newspaper he read and a curl of cigarette smoke drifting toward the upholstered ceiling.

The morning’s biscuits—though cool—were still soft. John put down three of them handily, all slathered in the piquant jam and washed down with black coffee. Mid-meal, he had gestured to Laszlo that he would not object should he want to continue reading. The paper that so engrossed the Doctor turned out to be another of this Baldwin fellow’s.

“What’s ‘organic selection,’ then?” John asked, dragging his napkin over his lips.

Laszlo raised his eyebrows, clearly not expecting the question. “Well...hm. In short, it’s the notion that behaviors most favorable to early childhood development appear to be selected with remarkable accuracy from an excess of behaviors accrued from imitation.”

John laughed, aware then that he would rue the moment he posed the question. “I have _no_ idea what any of that means.”

Watching the contortions of Laszlo’s expression as he attempted to find a way to express the concept was, at least, amusing.

“That is to say,” he finally tried, “young children imitate what they see their parents and siblings doing. Then, ah, they seem to choose the behaviors that will serve them best in their future life, even though no young child could possibly know what will serve him best.”

“They do it...unconsciously?” asked John.

“Precisely. Much like Darwin’s finches. The Englishman—he observed adaptation in the shape of the birds’ beaks.”

“I _know_ Darwin,” John asserted, brushing away a mild fit of peevishness. He _had_ also attended Harvard.

But Laszlo wasn’t trying to condescend. “And a child,” he continued, “even before he begins to speak, has much greater wherewithal than a finch. Yet still not a fraction of what he’ll have as a man.”

John nodded, feeling as though he understood, at least on a level satisfactory to his own curiosity. “Do you know this Baldwin? A Princeton fellow.” He made certain to say the university’s name with the dismissal expected of an Ivy League rival.

“Through correspondence, yes,” said Laszlo. “Though we’ve never met in person. James is quite the revolutionary in the study of the mind.”

“He’s an alienist?”

Laszlo shook his head. “A psychologist. He studies the rational mind. The sane man. But it benefits me in my studies to read about his work with children. It’s essential that I understand the normal course of childhood development. In cases of abnormal trajectory, the process may then be gently corrected before the deviance becomes too ingrained.”

John nodded, fending off a chill. “Like Beecham. Or Dury. Whomever.”

“An extreme case, but yes.” Laszlo pulled at his beard, glancing out the window. “I wonder whether, according to James’s work, our Japheth had only suffering and ridicule to mimic in early life.” At this, a pained expression suffused his face. “Maybe his bloody path was marked out in full long before he could even see its its beginning.”

It was good that Laszlo then gazed out over the green fields passing. With breakfast sitting like a leaden ball in his stomach, John was certain his face looked pale and haggard, drained of all the vitality imparted by sleep. He felt his fingers trembling on the table-top. Japheth Dury aside, he struggled with the notion that his _own_ course might already have been decided—by an indulgent and careless youth. That, as he’d suspected earlier, he was doomed to a slow decline with a bottle of spirits his only constant friend.

*

Worry, expectation, and the exhaustion of travel had taken its toll by the time the train pulled into Boston’s South Station. A carriage ride to Newton would take nearly two hours—quite a bit of it, John suspected, along rutted country roads. He would have to remind himself to have a light breakfast in the morning lest it come up again _en route_. He could see that through Laszlo’s weariness still projected a jittery sort of unrest, and tried to put himself in his friend’s place to understand it fully.

What it would mean to the alienists’ trade that their skills could be used in resolving horrific crimes? A rise in prestige and trust, for certain. What John would never say to Laszlo was that such a rise might put public faith in his profession at “null” where before it had been below zero. Laszlo remained agitated during their supper, at one point tapping his spoon so insistently against the edge of a saucer that other diners began to cast disapproving looks their way. John reached out and put his hand over Laszlo’s, unable to help briefly running the pad of his thumb along the soft skin above his wrist, to feel the tendons dance and quaver there.

After attempting to telephone Sara at Number 808 but failing to get through, Laszlo walked down the hallway to their ground-floor accommodations, saying very little. He barely so much as nodded in John’s direction before retreating behind the door of his rented room. John stood for a moment—not angry but baffled—until he heard the key pushed in and the lock click over.

The lodging was modest but acceptable. Its austerity was more than made up for by a quality meal in the attached tavern. The cod John had dined on had been moist but a tad salty. So when he returned to his quarters for the night, he filled a ceramic cup from the pitcher of cool water on the bed-side and drank deep.

He then bent slightly to study his reflection in the mirror over the wash-stand. Turning his head this way and that in the lamp-light brought out the creases around his eyes, the small furrows at the corners of his mouth. _Laughter lines_ , his grandmother called her own deep wrinkles. Certainly, John’s life thus far had seen its share of merriment, but also pain, which he often willed away simply by arranging his face in an an even merrier configuration. He’d no way to tell if he looked young or old for his age, if the redness of his cheeks was self-consciousness or his fondness for drink at last taking hold in his skin.

His thoughts wandered to the lines of Laszlo’s face: soft, open, often belying his secretive demeanor. John had not seen his long-time friend without the neat beard he’d worn since after their college days. Yet John suspected were he to have it shaved he would look a decade or more younger. Perhaps that was what the children in the Institute saw: the round inquisitiveness of youth beyond the dark, hooded eyes and facial hair.

Upon stepping away from the basin, John discovered to his shock that he was half-hard in his drawers, and immediately threw the curtains closed over the room’s single window. Shame now providing the flush in his cheeks, he nonetheless shed his jacket and waistcoat and unbuttoned his trousers with haste, then sat at the edge of the bed to get a hand around his growing erection.

The peculiar and identifiable scent of sex blossomed into the room as John tugged his trousers and drawers down his thighs and spat into his palm. The first touch was bliss as always. But all too soon, the realization bloomed at the back of his mind that he remained alone, living out a fantasy only in imagined, provocative glimpses. He shut his eyes and tried to remember the taste of Laszlo’s mouth, the brief and almost overwhelming moment of yielding as they stood by the door in their Washington lodgings.

So lost was he in the effort of recall that he didn’t hear the click of the door’s latch. The hinge did not so much as murmur. A sharp intake of breath and he at last looked up. Laszlo stood in the doorway, his cheeks seeming to pinken noticeably in the one or two frozen seconds before either man moved.

Jolted from his trance, John snatched a feather pillow from the bed and used it to cover his nakedness, feeling his own skin heat up. “Laszlo…” The name was choked in his throat.

“Ah…” Laszlo took a couple of skittering steps into the room and hastily closed the door behind him, knocking his own shoulder in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness. The door slammed shut, both ominous and promising. “John—”

“Could we talk later?” John managed. Against the tide of embarrassment, his erection still held strong, which could be attributed only to the fact that it was the object of his lust who’d caught him out. “I’m a bit...occupied.”

A whole host of emotions flitted over Laszlo’s face: some unrecognizable and changing before an attempt could be made to puzzle them out. Then, without a word, Laszlo reached with slim, sure fingers to grasp the brass key and turn it soundly, locking the door. He then drew out the key and let it driop for good measure.

John found himself in a state of such amazement that it seemed if he opened his eyes wider they might fall right out of his head. “What are you—?”

Any further words—if indeed they could even be found—were cut off at once. Laszlo strode forward, footfalls loud on the boards, and took great handfuls of John’s hair before yanking him up to meet his lips. That first contact was too fierce and uncoordinated to truly be considered a kiss, yet still John was happy to ignore the pain of Laszlo’s fingers knotted into his hair, the sharp edges of his small teeth.

When he broke away, Laszlo was panting, his eyes closed.

John clutched at his face, the breath spilling over his bruised and wetted mouth sweeter than anything he could remember. Nearly at the point of speaking, he instead thought better of it and drew Laszlo to him again, into a much gentler and more considered embrace. To finally have eager, even _submissive_ , participation excited John beyond measure. His cock throbbed below the pillow that he still clutched. Realizing this, he let loose his grip on it and took to running his hands up Laszlo’s flanks instead. It was then that he realized the man was without jacket or waistcoat.

There were slim hands flitting all over John’s face and shoulders—caressing and exploring. Laszlo was silent but for the soft huffs of his breath, and John wanted so suddenly and urgently to draw indulgent sounds from his throat that it was overwhelming. However, when he reached for Laszlo’s trouser-fastenings, he stepped out of his reach.

Prepared for disappointment, John met with quite the opposite when Laszlo pulled away the feather pillow and sank down so quickly that his knee-caps knocked against the bare boards. Only moments later, a warm hand was encircling his cock and a warmer mouth engulfing him. John saw bursts of white light erupt in the room.

The groan that fell from his lips may have been loud enough to rouse the upstairs guests and he couldn’t have cared less. Laszlo’s hair slid again and again through his fingers, cornsilk-fine and falling to veil his face. Although John wanted to watch, he also merely wanted to _feel_.

If “boast” was indeed the word, John could boast a fair number of past partners: from fumbling, virginal young women to professionals well-versed in the art of pleasure. What he expected from Laszlo was the former: skittishness, not to mention the inevitable nip of teeth. What he _got_ more closely resembled the latter.

As he recalled the encounter in the early hours of the morning, long after Laszlo had returned to his own quarters, he couldn’t be certain which notion was more surprising: that the act had felt so good or that it had felt _practiced._

In the moment, however, John felt himself pulled toward his peak like a marionette, the guide-wires not tied to but _within_ his skin and converging at a fiery point. The precipice came upon him so suddenly that he almost forgot the courtesy of a signal. “Dear _God_ , Laszlo,” he forced out. “You’re going to make me—”

Laszlo made no sound but instead clutched at the bare inside of John’s thigh, the tips of his fingers making shadowy pits in the skin.

And then, John’s rational thought crumbled and fell away. He fairly bellowed with the force of his release. If the neighbors hadn’t been awake before, they certainly were now. Heedless, mindless, John stroked the soft waves of hair brushing his inner thighs as the waves of sensation receded.

Laszlo stayed just as he was.

Knowing that he had of his own accord drunk down what John had given him almost made John’s spent cock stir once more.

Then he stood, not without effort, bracing his left hand on John’s thigh as he swiped the back of the other across his lips.

John wrapped trembling arms around him, drawing him close and resting his head against his chest. There, again, the familiar scent of exertion and the spice that was peculiarly Laszlo’s. He wanted to tear the shirt away, sending buttons flying, and press his cheek to naked skin...but he doubted either Laszlo or his tailor would much approve. “Why?” he asked instead, muttering into the crumpled fabric.

He could feel Laszlo’s chest hitch as he searched for words. “I thought...that it would compromise my work,” he said. “My _intellect_. Giving in, that is.” His brief laugh caused John’s skull to knock gently against his sternum.

Before speaking again, Laszlo ran an absent finger over the upper edge of John’s ear—a gesture so unconsidered and tender it made John’s breath seize in his lungs. “Only the opposite happened,” he went on. “The more steadfast I was in my refusal the more distracted I became. You’ll pardon me, I hope, if I relate this to my work, but experience at times requires an...exorcism of sorts.”

John made a noncommittal noise into Laszlo’s shirt. He was so sated and pleased that he felt apt to fall asleep as he sat, half-undressed, listening to the soft voice above his head.

“A child who is disruptive in lessons or overly physical in play is most likely trying to overpower the contents of his mind. To drown them out with shouting and roughness because sitting quietly invites unwelcome thoughts. I find only when he is able to voice those thoughts—even if they are difficult or embarrassing—he finds almost immediate calm.” He paused, prompting John to stroke the still-clothed small of his back with his knuckles. “Quiet and stillness have long been friends of mine, but I turned the turmoil inward, throwing myself into study and analysis. Yet I was hardly able to retain a single fact I read.”

John moved, then, resting his chin against Laszlo’s belly and looking upward. He was pleased to see lips that were still ruddy and slightly swollen. “And this is my fault?”

Laszlo refused to fall into the trap, however teasingly laid. “Not as such.”

John sniffed, unbothered. “So, how is your mind now?”

“Placid.” With one hand, he reached up to cover a half-stifled yawn.

Well familiar with the feeling and desiring of a few hours’ rest himself, John decided to hold him only a few more stolen minutes before releasing him to rest.

*

True to his confession, Laszlo the next morning looked refreshed. As for himself, John had no intention of complaining about the few hours of shallow sleep he’d managed. Much of his wakefulness had been spent reviewing earlier moments in his mind, savoring each detail that at the time he’d been too glutted with pleasure to take much note of. At one point—that point having been the delicious thought that, after leaving untouched, Laszlo gave in to temptation and took care of his own presumed need—John did consider pulling himself off again. Satiation and drowsiness won over in the end, but he was certain he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.

Laszlo proved clear-headed and cogent over breakfast and fairly trembled with anticipation during the carriage ride to Newton. John had only heard of the place because his grandmother had an affinity for a brand of revolting, fig-stuffed tea biscuit manufactured there. The things were vile.

Laszlo had not ever sampled one.

John felt even-keeled while his companion demonstrated his anxiousness by glancing out the carriage window far too often and worrying the skin of his lame hand until it showed red even in the indirect light. It was too difficult a task for a man to bear, John thought, to avoid reaching over to take hold of the abused hand.

He found his equilibrium shattered before too long, though. The ramshackle farmstead at first looked abandoned. He and Laszlo ventured into a barn that smelled of moldering hay and manure. John was rattled almost out of his skin when he heard the cocking of a rifle from the loft. Not once since the death of his brother had John felt the need to place himself in mortal peril for the sake of another. (He would, of course, have done so for Miss Sara Howard, but he had an inkling she was more than capable of fending for herself.)

However, when that hollow click had sounded from behind the hay bales, John would without hesitation have blocked Laszlo’s body with his own. It was at once an empowering and disturbing impulse.

Thanks to Laszlo’s silver tongue, no bravado was necessary. Adam Dury, a shifty-eyed and balding man, clambered down to the dusty floor with the weapon lowered. He might have been the same age as John and Laszlo, but already the weathering of his skin and ligaments rendered his movements creaky and his appearance dull.

The rifle, which the elder Dury brother held warily as he spoke, was an old but well-kept Winchester ‘73. While Laszlo made introductions, John marveled at the oiled oak stock, the straight and solid barrel. He had never shot one, but as a young man he’d seen advertisements alongside news articles about the latest territory conquered by regiments bearing ‘73s.

Soon, though, the fabled allure of the gun was all but forgotten in light of the horrifying story Adam Dury had to tell. So discomfiting was the atmosphere after all had been said that John could hardly wait to mount the carriage steps again and have the farm behind him.

Laszlo, too, seemed none too eager to stay. The thing that Japheth Dury had grown into was so easily traced to the traumas of his childhood that even John could pick up the trail. He couldn’t imagine what it might be like for Laszlo, who strove so earnestly to shape young minds before they became set in a damaging pattern. Not a candle had been set by anyone along the dark path walked by Japheth Dury.

This time, instead of watching Laszlo wring his hands raw, John did reach out and clutch them. Laszlo gave a brief, pained smile in return.

“I know,” John told him.

Laszlo sighed, then shook his head as if searching for words. “For a while,” he began with a grim tone, “when we started our search, I entertained the theory that our killer’s brain—Japheth’s—was a mass of shadows. Indistinct, like a thundercloud.” He pried one hand from John’s grasp to flick it through the stuffy air of the carriage’s cabin. “With the lightning that moved through it being his only moments of conscious thought.”

“And now?” The content of Japheth Dury’s mind was not something John had tried with overmuch effort to envision. Pressed for an answer, however, he might have said something along the same lines: that it resembled a swirling and scab-colored morass.

Laszlo grimaced. “I fear what he sees in his mind is a tableau of far greater clarity, and that might be all the worse for him.”

“Re-living his crimes over and over in his head?”

“Not his own,” Laszlo said, “but those perpetrated against _him_. An unending stream, like a kinetograph gone mad.”

At that, John frowned, put in mind of his outing with Mary. It seemed at the same time recent and pushed into a distant, hazy past. He was loath to associate the breathless thrill of the crashing celluloid waves with the very real horrors he had witnessed since March. Remembering Mary’s small hands clutching at his arm as each towering breaker crested on the linen screen, he also felt a pang of guilt.

Later that evening, he would see it as having been a premonition. He shook his head, partly to clear it. “I don’t understand.”

“I believe, John, that the murders are Japheth’s way of blocking out the images for a time,” said Laszlo. “Like a sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses, if you can suffer a gastronomic comparison.”

Whether from the rocky movement of the carriage along the road or the unpalatable remark, John’s gut _did_ feel somewhat unsettled.

“With new blood he washes away the old,” Laszlo said. “Or tries to.”

John blinked a couple of times. “Like...ah, Lady MacBeth?”

At that, Laszlo stared, owlish, for a moment. Then he fell against the tufted seat-back with as unrestrained a laugh as John had ever heard from him. “John Moore! I do believe, for once, your literary reference is on the nose!”

Rueful, John strained against cracking a smile. He was about to join his friend in laughter when a sound like a breaking tree branch split the afternoon air. “What was—?”

John’s words were cut short as a hole filled with white daylight blasted through the carriage car wall above Laszlo’s head. Stinging splinters of wood rained down onto his face and scalp. “Christ!” he shouted.

Another shot fairly disintegrated the paneled window glass. Both John and Laszlo flinched away. As John watched, a shadow slid over the bullet-hole behind the driver’s seat and then fell away: the body of the driver falling from his perch. Suddenly the carriage jounced, sending its occupants toward the ceiling and back down hard on their rumps. John looked across the car at Laszlo, who knew then what had happened. The hapless driver, whether alive or dead, had gone under the wheels.

John opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment the carriage veered from the path and a tree branch thick as a man’s forearm thrust through the broken window, littering the car with shredded leaves, glass, and debris.

The horses, panicked by the shots—which had by then mercifully stopped—still leapt and strained at their traces. The momentum, instead of freeing the carriage at once from the tree, swiveled the heavy limb toward the front of the carriage where Laszlo sat.

John was afraid for a panicked half-second that it had met with Laszlo’s face, smashing or tearing apart the sweet softness he so earnestly tried to hide. But then Laszlo appeared between his knees—very much as he had been the previous night—though under much less pleasurable circumstances.  

Feeling very much like a frog in a jar being shaken by a cruel child, John grasped for hand-holds around the car while at the same time clinging tight to Laszlo’s jacket. The branch still had its hold on the tree but the leaderless team in the reins could not be deterred from its frightened rages. With a wrenching crack, the branch became unstuck, tearing through part of the roof of the carriage as it went.

Laszlo clutched at John’s waist with his stronger hand as John bent double over them both, protecting their heads and faces. With a last wrenching bounce, the carriage was back in its track but going far too fast.

John shot to his feet, a trick made too easy by the shuddering and jumping underneath him.

“John, no!” Laszlo shouted.

Through the ragged hole torn in the carriage, John spied a wooden bridge along the path ahead, built over the shallow, rocky valley of a creekbed. He sat at once and clutched Laszlo tighter. “Hold onto me!” he bellowed. “We’re either over the creek or into it!”

Both men lost contact with the floor-boards when the runaway cart reached the bridge’s lip. Another sharp report, easily mistaken for a rifle shot. As John would realize a few moments later, it had been the breaking of the relatively thin wooden harness shaft. He did not hear the snapping traces, the screaming horses, as soon afterward both he and Laszlo were suspended in midair and holding one another. They—and the orphaned cab—executed nearly a full turn before all the world became lost in clattering wreckage.

When John opened his eyes, the panorama before him was startling in its clarity. He sighed relief at only having knocked his head against the well-padded leather of the seat-back. Or what remained of it. Upon impacting the rocks on either edge of the small creek, the carriage car had burst open. Its two ruined halves lay to either side like eggshells—John and Laszlo representing the mostly-intact yolk.

_Laszlo_.

The eminent alienist lay atop John, cushioned by the body below him. He raised his head, showing unfocused eyes. Twin ribbons of blood trickled from his nostrils and down his beard, reminding John uncomfortably of their quarrel on the disorderly house roof-top. Laszlo, his vision clearing, saw that John stared at his face and at once placed a hand over his mustache. The fingers came away bright red.

“What did you hit?” asked John, his voice weak and breathy—no doubt from Laszlo crashing against his torso. The man was heavier than his apparent delicacy conveyed.

Laszlo’s voice sounded as though his nose had been stuffed with cotton. “Your chin, I believe.”

In response, John touched his face. There was blood, but the skin below was intact. As if it had only begun to creep in around him, John suddenly felt the chilly creek water that soaked his clothes and raised gooseflesh on his skin. It was only when he tried to raise himself out of it that a bolt of pain radiated through his thigh. His breath stuck in his throat; his skin went colder.

“I’m shot,” he croaked, and patted along his leg in the area where he assumed the bullet had lodged itself.

Laszlo turned his head, watery blood dripping from his beard. “No. At least, I don’t think so.” Not without effort, he freed something from a point of jagged broken timber—something that turned out to be a bit of John’s gray flannel drawers. The piece of the carriage was stained darker until the point fracture revealed the lighter wood underneath, now splotched with red.

As John looked down, he saw a slow ooze of blood swirling into the creek’s flow, like a paint-brush dipped in a glass. A wide tear in his trousers showed the source: a garnet-colored slash through which a hint of ivory showed. “Is that bone?” John asked, suddenly dizzy. The sky and trees above him hawed like a boat in the swells.

Laszlo splashed a bit of creek-water onto the wound, making John hiss in pain and surprise. “No,” he said, the tone definitive. “Just a bit of fat.”

John’s teetering brain was brought back to stillness in an instant. He frowned. “Not much, though”

The sight of Laszlo rolling his eyes was somewhat less insulting given his blood-streaked chin. “Your vanity has no bounds, even in crisis.” He cleared his throat, then sniffed up what sounded like a great mouthful of blood. He’d most certainly swallow it, however distasteful. The notion of spitting on the ground (or, in this case, the water) in even the direst of circumstances would offend Laszlo’s fine sensibilities. “At least the wound isn’t severe.”

Wincing, the pain now settling into his shocked bones, John said, “It _feels_ severe.”

Using John’s uninjured leg as a leverage—unthinking as ever—Laszlo pushed himself to his feet amid the wreckage. The creek was calf-deep, no more, the water making pleased noises now that it had far more surfaces off of which to play. He braced himself and extended a hand.

The wound flexed and John bit back a cry as he got his feet beneath him, but in a moment was standing on his uninjured leg, dripping like a laundress.

To be cautious, Laszlo removed his jacket and tore the sleeve from his shirt in order to knot it around John’s thigh, just above the ruptured skin. “Do you think you can make it up the embankment?” he asked.

John nodded despite his uncertainty. For once, he was the one leaning heavily on his friend, who half-hauled, half-bore him up from the stream-bed and the grassy verge to level ground.

“Listen,” Laszlo said.

At first, John heard nothing over the rush of the disturbed water, but then he caught the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Clasping his leg, he said, “I’m not sure I can ride.”

In any case, the point proved moot. It was not the runaway carriage horses returning, but a buckboard wagon drawn by a dapple-gray draft horse. Its hooves, set about with feathers of nearly white hair, seemed large enough to put craters in the dirt of the pathway.

A man in faded chambray sitting in the wagon’s seat removed his straw hat. He wore a full, rough, sandy-colored beard that flowed down over his collar. His voice gave him away as younger than he looked. “Fellows,” he said, “it looks like you’ve got yourselves in a spot of trouble.”

*

The man, whose name turned out to be Samuel, gave John and Laszlo a ride into Newton proper. John was settled amid two sacks of feed in the back of the wagon, resting against them like the world’s poorest Sultan. Sam—as the man insisted they call him—tasked Laszlo with keeping a bolt of floral cotton fabric away from the blood that still leaked from John’s wound, saying without a trace of jest that his wife would “have his head” if he dirtied it up. Though his leg throbbed with every ridge and stone the wagon hit, John was at least certain that Laszlo was almost as miserable clutching the precious fabric like a childhood toy while trying with any remaining strength to keep himself from toppling over into the dust.

Still and all, he offered Sam a full silver dollar for their passage, which Sam cheerfully turned down, instead directing them to the home of the nearest physician. The doctor looked doubtful as they told their story, but nonetheless provided John with stitching and copious carbolic acid, as well as a couple fingers of whisky in a tin cup. That final “treatment” John appreciated most of all. The doctor even, as Laszlo would later remark, dressed the wound with some of the new heat-treated gauze, guaranteed by the Johnson manufactory to be free of harmful micro-organisms until removed from its packaging.

Later, John indulged his friend’s vocal ardor over this wonder gauze, especially owing to the fact that he had just acquired a new suit of clothes and a brass-topped walking-cane, and that Newton was not nearly the pastry-centric backwater he had assumed it to be.

He took the liberty of using the telephone at the inn while Laszlo washed away the dirt and filth from the carriage accident. Thinking secretly that he might have liked to join him, reason prevailed as John recognized that even the largest bath-tub would not comfortably hold two grown men.

He did permit a brief foray into imagination in which he and Laszlo bathed in one of the natural springs that were all the rage for preserving health. Perhaps he could suggest they share a rail journey to the Arkansas city of Hot Springs, where not only the mineral water was reputed to be of the finest quality, but rousing night-life could be found when all the dull convalescence was through. Not _entirely_ dull—they might just find a sequestered pool… John would cup the steaming water in his hands and pour it over Laszlo’s bare shoulders, move his damp hair aside to kiss the tender nape of his neck...

Not a soul answered the telephone at Number 808. John next rang the police station for the Isaacsons. He was promptly and rudely disconnected by an irate clerk who assumed him _persona non grata_. Irritated, he made his third attempt a call to Laszlo’s, where Stevie or Cyrus might be able to speak to someone’s whereabouts.

Much to his shock, the voice on the other end of the wire was Sara’s. Her typically clear words were thick and clotted with tears.

“Oh, _John_ ,” she said, stifling a sob after pronouncing his name.

“Sara, my God! What’s happened?” Unbidden and unwanted, nervous sweat began to prickle under his collar.

“It’s all too terrible,” she went on, cryptic in her distress. “The Doctor—oh, he’ll never forgive himself!”

“Calm down,” John said, two words he was certain he’d never uttered in that order when speaking to Sara Howard. “Has there been another murder?” _Joseph_ , he thought, bracing himself for the worst.

It was, indeed, terrible—though not at all in the way he expected.

“It’s Mary, John,” Sara said, sorrow rising again in her tone. “She’s dead.”

*

The service was small and poorly attended, as so few in New York had truly known Mary Palmer. Although John could not imagine Laszlo having attended church in his life, the soft-spoken pastor seemed to know his friend well, placing a hand on Laszlo’s shoulder and whispering for long minutes what were assumed to be words of comfort in the grieving man’s ear.

It was, John reasoned, far too fine a spring day for the heavy task of bidding farewell to their beloved friend. Birds ducked and wheeled through the overhanging branches, which rustled over the strains of a lone violin. The musician, a young man of beardless, almost angelic countenance, played “A Mansion in Glory” and “How Sweet is My Rest” amid the pastor’s praise for Mary’s earthly virtues.

He was earnest in his delivery, and not an eye was dry among those present, but none of his words evoked the spirited woman who had poured a tub of filthy dish-water all over John’s shoes one cool spring night. It all rang a bit hollow and, looking over at Laszlo, it appeared he felt the same way.

He made no protest, though, only stood mute as Mary had been in life. Even when the ceremony had ended, he stayed transfixed by the shovels-full of earth as they thumped dully onto the polished casket. After Sara and the Isaacson brothers had gone, when Stevie and Cyrus were preparing the calash for the journey back to a more somber home, when fast-moving clouds dimmed the sunlight, still Laszlo stood and watched the rain make a soup of the new-turned earth over the grave.

John’s shoes were getting soaked (perhaps that was fitting) despite his umbrella. He walked over to gently touch his friend’s shoulder. It trembled and seemed shrunken, insubstantial. “Laszlo,” he said softly.

“You should leave.” Laszlo pushed away the hand trying to hold the umbrella at least partly over his head.

John relented, sighed, and folded it, allowing the rain to fall on him, too. “Let me see you home.”

If possible, Laszlo hung his head lower. “I mean leave _me_.” In a nearly inaudible voice, he added, “I hurt everyone.”

“You haven’t hurt me, Laszlo. At least...not in a way I haven’t deserved.”

At this, Laszlo looked up. His red-rimmed eyes were blazing. “It’s a matter of time. That’s all.”

“Come out of the rain,” John said. “We can talk about this. I’m not leaving you.”

Again, he stared at the grave, watching the runnels of mud filtering into the grass at its verge. “Miss Crawford was right, I’m afraid.”

John frowned. “Cyrus’s niece? She is in no place to talk about Mary.”

The shake of Laszlo’s head was almost violent. “No. About me. Stevie, Cyrus, Mary—any one of them would follow me beyond the ends of the earth. I thought—foolishly—that they would choose to because of our friendship. I tried, John, tried so _very hard_ to let them know that they were equals in my eyes. But the world reminds them that they are not. What good are the efforts of one man—a pathetic cripple, at that!—against the entire world? They feel...Mary _felt_...its weight like an obligation. To yield to my wishes simply due to the accident of my birth—as a white man of status! Cyrus was badly wounded. And dear Mary is—!” He stopped, raising a clenched fist to his lips as if stopping himself from declaring Mary gone could undo her death.

John felt a choking wave of frustrated pity rise within him. It seemed any words offered would tumble away like acorns from a sloped roof.

Laszlo dragged the back of his hand violently along his cheek, trying to erase the tears there when the rain was doing so already. “I should never have apologized to Sara. She’s far better off hating me. Keeping her distance. If only I’d hit her _harder_ …”

At that, John tightened his grip on Laszlo’s shoulder and shook him soundly. “Stop this at once, Laszlo! This isn’t _you_. Cyrus, Mary, even Sara—they stay by you precisely because you’re _not_ like the rest. You’re better! A far better man than I am, that’s for sure.”

The hopeless, haunted expression on Laszlo’s face when he raised his head again was enough to break John’s heart. “It’s kind of you to say so, John. But I’ve held myself too highly for too long. Without recognizing my own hubris. Like Milton’s Lucifer, I have only the farther to fall because of it. This...this is my punishment.”

Slowly, as Laszlo spoke, John’s sorrow had been replaced with indignation. It turned to rage, then, at the man’s sheer presumption. John thrust Laszlo away from him so violently that he stumbled, then stalked a few paces out of the muck of Mary’s grave-mound. “To _Hell_ with all of that!” John shouted. “Straight to Hell! Since we met, Laszlo, I’ve admired your restraint. Your tolerance. Christ, I’ve _envied_ you for it. I’ve found myself in the gutters more times than I can recount. What’s saved me was knowing I could look up and see _you_! You’ve been my life-line. If you’re no better than the common man, the common man is lost! If you of all people have no virtue, what does that leave me?”

Laszlo scoffed, a half-sob, mingled tears and rain falling from his beard to the trodden ground. “I don’t exist to save you from drowning, John.”

Again, the tide of blind fury swelled in John’s chest, but then a strange thing happened: the wave receded, drawing with it all the debris that might have risen. Memories of his brother’s confusion and agony near death, all the subsequent mornings of humiliation and regret after intemperate nights—they all fell away into a misty background, irrelevant. He approached Laszlo again. “Then…” he stopped for a moment, uncertain that the words would emerge from his mouth in the way he wanted them to. “Let me be your life-line this time. Laszlo,” he swallowed past the lump in his throat, “take my hand.”

The bare glint of hope on his friend’s face was a peek of sunlight through the heavy clouds hanging over both of them. It flickered and then fled.

“I want that more than anything,” Laszlo said. He reached out as if to touch John’s face, but held himself back at the last moment. “ _Almost_ anything.”

Now, the tears that had begun during Mary’s eulogy fell freely down John’s cheeks, warm in the cold downpour.

“But you’ll die, John,” Laszlo continued. “Stay with me and you’ll die. And above all else, I want you to live. To move on and be happy. Leave me to my graves and my mourning. There’s nothing for you here.” With that, he turned his back and began to walk toward the waiting carriage, his slumped shoulders telling a more eloquent story of defeat than his words ever could.

With all his being, John wanted to run after, to chase him down. Tell him: _There is nothing for me without you_.

But the tide had come back in at last. John only stood, hope and light draining as surely as the insistent rainwater into his shoes.

*

It was a vexed Sara who showed up to John’s grandmother’s house on the third day after the second night in a row he went out to get blind drunk. And had succeeded in his quest. John heard the rap on the door and unintelligible words from his grandmother at the threshold and brushed it off. The stomp of heeled boots on the stairs soon informed him that the cool, dark womb of his bedchamber faced imminent rupture. John groaned like a maimed soldier and crushed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

Sara flung open the door with force enough to send the handle knocking against the wall.

_Grandmother had been saying it was due for a re-papering, anyway. No doubt she had some horrendous flocked paisley atrocity in mind._

“John Moore! What do you think you’re doing?”

Even the light coming in from the hallway made him squint and the headache thump in his temples. “‘Think’ has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re a sorrier sight than a match-girl in a downpour.” Her disgust was audible. More footsteps followed, closer and louder, then the click-and-swish of curtains along the drapery rod.

White daylight poured in. John gave another histrionic groan and pulled the bedcovers over his face.

Relentless, Sara moved to the foot of the bed and yanked them away—sheet, coverlet, and all.

John convulsed, doubling up on himself in his sweat-doused night-clothes. “I’m not dressed!” Shouting made it feel as though his brains were trying to escape through his ears.

“Owing to the number of times I’ve found you without your trousers,” Sara said, “that should be the least of your concerns.”

He blinked, but the agony would not abate. “Can’t a man enjoy a lazy morning?” Fumbling fingers reached for the pillow, but Sara whisked it away before he had as much as touched the pillow-cover.

She walloped his head with it. “It’s half past noon!”

Black swirls erupted behind his eyelids. “For Christ’s sake, Sara! Have mercy!”

With a derisive sniff, she dropped the limp pillow back onto his curled form. The fabric was damp. “You smell like a stock-yard.”

As loath as he was to move for fear of aggravating his headache, the sound of Sara pouring water into a glass roused his interest. His tongue felt thick and mossy as a Central Park boulder. Taking great care, he rolled over to his side to face the desk, the hated window. A brief peek showed that at least there were no whisky bottles visible. He must have done most of his drinking at the public house. John could not be called upon to remember how he’d gotten back to his grandmother’s home if his life depended it.

Sara’s voice was a touch softer as she held out the glass of water. “Drink.”

Managing to haul himself mostly upright against the bedstead, John took the glass, hoping it might quell the first stirrings of nausea. The first sip was heavenly, a balm to his tortured throat. “What’s so damned important that you need to barge in here like the last trumpet has sounded?” he asked, giving an ineffectual pinch to the bridge of his nose.

Her expression turned hard again. “Japheth Dury is still in this city, cutting up _children_ like prize hogs. Or don’t you remember?”

“Laszlo—” John began.

Sara fairly _growled_. “Say his name and I’ll pour your piss-pot directly over your head, John Moore!”

Truth be told, John was fine with the interdiction. He’d gone out to get a glorious jag on the past couple of nights precisely so he could forget the feel of that name on his lips. Still, he grumbled, “Calm down, woman.”

“We know who the killer is now,” she said. “We know why he does what he does, and when. Marcus and Lucius are still keen on the investigation, and so am I. Doctor Kreizler’s part is over, as far as I’m concerned.”

Still peevish, John didn’t reply. Instead, he drained the last of the water in the glass. It was a mistake. The mild swaying in his gut turned into a full, gale-force churning. Eyes going wide, he dropped the empty glass on the mattress and shot up out of bed, brushing past Sara and sending her slightly off balance. He barely reached the wash-basin before the contents of his stomach—mostly sour alcohol—were coming up in great heaves against the white ceramic.

Feeling jittery and purged when at last it stopped, he stumbled to the side and leaned heavily back against the wall, sliding slowly down over the bumps of the wainscoting to land on his rear on the floor. At any moment, he expected the basin of effluvia to be tipped over him, but instead Sara tutted and crouched beside him, brushing the lank hair from his brow.

“Oh, John,” she said. “What’s got into you? I haven’t seen you this bad since you broke things off with Julia.” She paused for a moment. “Are you—? That is…”

He raised his head from where it rested on his forearms, even though it was painful. “What?”

Sara touched his forehead again. “Was it Mary?”

“Was what—?” Her implication took some time to wend its way through the cottony fog in his brain. “Oh. You think I was— _no_. I wasn’t...involved with Mary.”

She nodded. “I thought perhaps Kreizler was. Or wanted to be.”

Though she didn’t intend it, the statement felt needling. “No,” John said again. “He’s not involved with any woman.”

“You sound very certain.”

John groaned, brushing her insistence aside. “Let me have a bath. Give me an hour. I’ll...I’ll meet you all at Number 808.”

Sara inhaled, then let it out in a thin huff. “All right, then. But don’t be too long. We’ve a lot to catch up on. Lucius and Marcus made some discoveries. So did I.”

Her final sentence piqued his interest enough to break through the fog, but by the time he’d gathered the wherewithal to ask her, she had gone.

*

A wash had felt good, even though John’s skin was still so sensitive from his overindulgence of the previous night (and early morning) that all but the gentlest clothes chafed him. Having eschewed a waistcoat and sporting an older suit that had been worn to greater softness, John finally found himself at Number 808. Laszlo’s neat writing had been scoured from the chalk-board, but his empty desk remained in the circle.

No one remarked on his use of the walking cane as they settled in an arc facing Sara and the board.

To John’s surprise, though not to that of Lucius or Marcus, Sara said she had taken it upon herself to travel to New Paltz while the men of the “partnership” were away. At once, John felt the glow of amazement and admiration for her. She was intrepid as she ever had been, brooking no condescension. It seemed she had caught his smile from where she stood before the board, because she gave a nod of thanks in his direction.

In New Paltz, Sara had gleaned from local residents that Reverend Dury had been none too well liked, his apocalyptic rantings largely ignored. Japheth was not the only one subjected to the horror-show of pictures his father carried. Many had recoiled from the sight of the massacre photographs before, it seemed, divine justice had claimed the preacher and his wife. The later signs that Japheth showed of his terrible becoming were then made clearer by what the Isaacsons had to tell. A stuttering Marcus, wiping his brow, repeated the account of Japheth’s conduct during the riots. The poor, modest detective lost his words altogether when trying to describe the man’s murderous frenzy against the young rioter.

At which point the unruffled Lucius had cut in, cheerfully finishing with: “By all accounts, he was quite visibly aroused.”

John was mostly able to pay attention as the brothers bounced theories between them and Sara filled the chalk-board with her gracious, looping hand-writing. But the full horror of the case that faced them had descended once again and he felt helpless without the steadying presence of their former leader.

Not that his longing was entirely professional, either. Fragrant grains in the feed-bags of carriage horses along the streets had brought to mind the earthy-sweet fragrance of Laszlo’s skin. That odor lay concentrated especially in the hollow of his throat, under his arms, in the dense fluff at his groin. John could hardly touch his own unshaven face without remembering the slight prickle at the neat edges of Laszlo’s beard underneath his lips.

Maybe it was the immediacy and the newness, but he felt certain he had never been so maudlin and distracted over Julia. It was only magnified by Laszlo’s conspicuous absence.

_A girl?_ John thought miserably. _No, Sara. Quite the opposite. And on top of that, something you could never imagine or condone._ So lost was he in his brooding that he barely registered the moment Sara, Lucius, and Marcus happened upon a workable idea. Japheth Dury, as John Beecham, might have gained access and familiarity in the city’s downtrodden parts by working for a charity organization.

Their excited leaping and chattering—reminiscent of pigeons flocking to a child with a handful of seed—roused John briefly. The group was ready to split and “lay down shoe leather” in search of clues. John offered to canvass the disorderly houses by way of their boys. The truth was that he wanted to make sure Joseph hadn’t been snatched up and brutalized while the investigative team was panning for flakes of gold in the muck of Japheth Dury’s sad life.

With the plan agreed upon, all went their separate ways. None but John—at least that he could discern—felt drained of vigor and hope with Laszlo gone. Donning his hat against the rays of gold-hued light slanting in between buildings, he figured that if he had a long talk with Joseph it would at least hold off the inevitable descent into drunkenness for a little while.

*

He found the boy on Orchard near Broome Street, sitting on a bench outside a tobacconist’s and idly passing a pocket-knife back and forth between his small hands. It heartened John a bit to see him fumble it once, to know that he wasn’t yet entirely adept at handling killing weapons.

When he caught Joseph’s eye, the boy immediately sat up, but then shook his head emphatically, a cryptic greeting. It was only when John heard the sigh from off to his right that he knew Joseph had been signalling someone else. He half-turned to see another boy, dark-haired, narrow his eyes briefly and then melt into the afternoon crowd on the side-walk.

Raising one eyebrow, John glared at Joseph with half-affected disapproval. “Picking pockets will more likely get you beaten than arrested.”

The boy’s shrug was blithe. “I wasn’t nippin’ ‘em.”

“You’re the look-out. Cops aren’t stupid.”

Joseph scoffed, a very large sound from a small person. “If they’re not stupid, how come they ain’t caught you-know-who?” Despite his puffed-up indignation, the boy slid over on the bench to allow John to sit beside him.

“We _do_ know who,” John said. “We know his name and where he’s from. What...made him like he is.”

“I thought you was born loony,” Joseph said. “There’s a couple boys what nobody likes to pal with. Always thought they was a little wrong in the head. Then Picky O’Malley caught ‘em trying to cut on the legs of a cab horse with a razor an’ now _no one_ on the street wants to mess around with ‘em.” He huffed again, more softly, and folded the blade of the knife into its housing. “Wish your man would give _them_ a couple new holes to piss out.”

John grabbed the boy’s skinny arm, a bit harder than he intended. “Don’t you wish that on anyone!”

Joseph hissed and squirmed. He looked affronted when John let him go. “All right, already. Don’t you go all bats on me, too.”

Shaking his head, John apologized. “It hasn’t been an easy week, if I’m honest.”

“That why you’ve got that fancy walking stick?” Joseph grabbed for the cane and John swept it out of his reach and leaned it against the bench on the other side.

“In part, yes.”

“Something else besides your crazy man? You stuck on some bit o’ jam?” Joseph grinned, gap-toothed, and dug a sharp elbow into John’s aching side.

He winced away. “Good Lord. You’re the second person today pestering me about romance. It was none of her business and it’s none of yours, either, young man.”

The boy’s eyes went wide. “ _Her_ business?”

John gave a half-hearted scowl. “A friend and a colleague. Not a topic of discussion.” He grabbed the cane. “Come on, then. There’s a cherry phosphate or two in it if you promise to keep the conversation out of the bedroom.”

At that, Joseph shrugged, his smile this time taking on a melancholy edge. “Half my life’s there, Mister Moore. Sometimes it beats the gutter and sometimes it don’t.”

The fact of the boy’s day-to-day existence tugged hard at John’s gut. He vowed to try to bring up the idea of Joseph surrendering himself to the care of the Institute, though he expected the idea to go over poorly. Even with its perils, there was also freedom in the streets. But giving over a bit of liberty was better than prison. Or a pauper’s grave. John clenched his teeth until the muscles of his jaw ached. Even if he never again spoke to Laszlo outside of a professional capacity, it might be worth it to see that the boy was cared for and diverted from a road either hopeless or disastrous. He could do his mourning of the loss of what could have been with Laszlo after Joseph was safe.

At the café, John took a table in the corner. He wanted no eavesdropping on what he had to say by peery counter clerks. Joseph plowed through two phosphates and an egg cream on top of it while John told him the harrowing story of Japheth Dury. He spared a few details—leaving out the fact of Dury’s _excited state_ during the mutilation of the young rioter—but figured that imparting a little of how damaged he truly was might frighten Joseph out of plying his trade until Japheth was locked up somewhere.

To coax it further, he left the boy with a small fortune of five dollars and stern instructions not to spend it on beer or hand it out to his friends.

“Rent out a room for a few nights, if you can,” John told him. “Take a few of the other boys, or girls, if you like.”

“I’d rather save it if it’s all the same,” Joseph said. “Warm enough now to sleep out. I ain’t gettin’ eaten to death in no louse house if I haven’t got to.” He hopped down from the chair in the gangly, resilient way that only children have, and John’s heart ached for what was left unspoiled of his youth. “Thanks for the scratch, Mister Moore. An’ the drinks. Got to shin and find a corner if you don’t mind. I’m burstin’ for a piss.”

Barely able to speak, John ruffled the boy’s sandy hair instead. “Off with you, then. Be safe. Don’t go anywhere with anyone you don’t know.”

John couldn’t say from the backward wave Joseph shot his way as he walked out the door whether or not the boy would heed a single word. He sighed, feeling tired and ancient, his knees crackling as he stood.

Dust from the dry street floated through the sideward-facing rays of late afternoon light. The familiarity of the broad bar at Luchow’s was only a carriage-ride away. He supposed he would be crooking the elbow right on schedule, after all.

*

John had only been belly-up to the bar for the (short) duration of a single cock-tail when the bar-man tapped him on the shoulder.

“Message for you, sir.”

Turning, puzzled, John took the small envelope. He had seen the courier boy come and go, but had thought nothing of it at the time. “Thanks, old boy,” he said, absently. Inside was a small card, written in a hand he recognized immediately.

 

_Took a chance. Pls forgive presumption._  
_Come if you can. I need you.  
_ _-L._

 

_I need you_. The final sentence of Laszlo’s note caused John’s stomach to leap into his chest. He was off like a rifle shot, “shinning,” as Joseph had put it, so quickly that he had to shout to the bar-man to put the drink on his account. The wound on his thigh, now mostly knitted up, still complained at the effort.

If he took offense at Laszlo knowing the spots he haunted, it faded behind him as he urged the cab driver to greater speed.

His pulse was as high when he reached Lazslo’s door, as if he had run the full distance from the restaurant. Quiet footsteps approached after he rapped with the knocker. Relief turned to concern when the door opened and John saw the state of the man before him.

Laszlo’s face was drawn and white as a linen table-cloth. Dark purple circles ringed his eyes, which were dull as John had ever seen them.

So great was John’s shock at his face alone that it took a few moments to register that a great dark stain was spreading along the right sleeve of Laszlo’s house-coat. Blood dripped from the fingers of his hand onto the polished wood of the entryway.

Laszlo went half-limp as John stepped over the threshold and took him in his arms, wrestling him back a bit so he could close the door against prying eyes. His cane clattered to the floor.

“Who’s done this to you?” John asked, panic raising the pitch of his voice. “Was it Connor?”

Shaking his head, Laszlo said, “I did it, John. Only me.”

“Well, where is Cyrus? Where’s Stevie?” John was aghast. “They should be here to help! They—they shouldn’t have let you do this in the first place!”

“Sent them away. I need—” Laszlo trailed off, clinging with his good hand to John’s jacket.

John fairly dragged him to the foot of the staircase, setting him down like dead weight in almost the exact spot where Mary’s lifeless body had been found. He brushed the hair from Laszlo’s forehead, touched his cheek. “I’m here.”

They rested for a few moments, Laszlo with eyes half-closed, one side of his face pressed against John’s chest. Then he stirred a little. “Help me upstairs, if you would,” he said. “I need to see to this.”

Laszlo was strong enough to sit by the edge of the claw-foot tub. The blood on his arm had already begun to dry and grow tacky. He winced as he peeled away the fabric of his under-shirt from the wounds.

When they had been properly rinsed, John saw a small constellation of jagged punctures in the withered bicep. What little he knew about evaluating damage to bodies he’d picked up from the Isaacsons, but the shape of these lacerations was enough to tell him Laszlo hadn’t used a knife. “How did you do this to yourself?” John asked.

As if ashamed, Laszlo looked away from his bloody handiwork. “Wine glass. Broken. Sometimes, children at the Institute cut or scratch themselves with objects they find. A nail pried out of a window-frame. They often tell me doing so creates distraction from—”

John whipped a clean towel from the rack and pressed it against the wounds, cutting off Laszlo’s words. “Right, well, I don’t much care what children do as of now. I care what _you_ do.”

“It was...ill-advised.”

“Idiotic, I’d say.” John forced himself to soften his tone when he saw Laszlo’s pained expression. “But no more so than setting out to get thoroughly muddled, as I have the past few nights.”

Laszlo tried a smile. “You don’t look your best.”

“Oh, cut your stick, you bastard,” John said. “You’ve no right to talk.”

A sad, slow shake of his head. “No, I haven’t.”

Lazslo instructed John as to where to find the mercurochrome and some of that new-fangled gauze the doctor in Newton had used on John’s leg. He had to smile, knowing that Laszlo was the type to need such a thing as soon as he had witnessed it in action. Deliberately taking a round-about path through the house, he found an empty place-setting at the dining table and the remains of the broken glass, the jagged stem stained with blood now brown and flaking. Beside the empty plate was a photograph: a thin, stern-looking man with long mustaches. He had just enough of a similar face-shape that he could be no one but Laszlo’s father. Frowning, John placed his thumb over the man’s face in the photograph, leaving an oily smudge when he lifted it.

Upon returning upstairs, he persuaded Laszlo to allow a quick scrub-down with the cloth and some lye soap. He was none too fresh after a few days shut in the house. With the wounds cleaned, treated, and dressed, and Laszlo in a fresh night-shirt, John helped him to his bed.

Laszlo must have thought he planned to leave, because he reached out a hand nearly as pale as the cotton of his garment and said, “Stay.”

John smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving. I’m only doing you the courtesy of keeping the filth of the street out of your bed.” He shed the shoes and his jacket, thankful again that he’d left the waistcoat at home. Then he clambered onto the bed facing Laszlo. When he placed a hand on one bearded cheek, Laszlo grasped it and held it firmly.

“Where are Cyrus and Stevie?” John asked.

“Cyrus is spending the week-end in a cabin along the Hudson, with his sister and her husband. And his niece, Miss Crawford. I’m a bit shocked she chose to accompany them. I found a man willing to lend them the cabin, for the right price. I’m sure it was double what he would have asked a white family. But it doesn’t matter. There’s a little orchard with pear trees. A piano for Cyrus, and a boat jetty. Good fishing, I’m told.”

“Have you ever been fishing, Laszlo?” The look John got in response was answer enough, and made him chuckle. He drew the pad of his thumb across Laszlo’s cheekbone. “That’s very kind of you. I’m sure Cyrus appreciates it. And Stevie?”

“I sent him to the Holland House for the night.”

John felt his shock at this could not be understated. “The hotel? Good Lord, Laszlo! That’s got to be upward of ten dollars a night!”

“I feel he’s earned it.” His smile was wry. “I told him to order the staff about as much as he cares to…though politely.”

John laughed again. “I still don’t agree with Miss Crawford, but surely now everyone will be good and convinced that you’re not exploiting them for your own gain.” He pulled his hand away, grasped Laszlo’s fingers, and kissed them. “But you can’t carry the guilt of Mary’s death alone. You shouldn’t have to carry it at all. It wasn’t your fault. Won’t you think about treating yourself half as kindly?”

“I have,” Laszlo said, drawing John’s hand against his chest. His gaze flickered downward for a moment. “I had someone run a message to Luchow’s, after all.”

Near-dizzy with fondness and gratitude, John propped himself up on one elbow and leaned in to kiss Laszlo, who met him without resistance. This simplest of acts, finally unencumbered by confusion or worry or guilt. Chaste as it was, it lit up John’s skin like a bonfire. “You did,” he acknowledged when they broke.

“Thank you, John,” Laszlo said.

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” John told him. “I was lost. I might have drunk myself to death in short order had you not sent that boy. I need something to come back to. Not my grandmother or her money or the newspaper. Or a bottle of whisky. And it can’t just be _anything_ , really. It has to be you, Laszlo. I need it to be you.”

A tear slid from the corner of Laszlo’s eye, slipping along the fine, straight edge of his nose.

John leaned in and kissed it away, then ran his tongue over his lips to taste the salt. Laszlo drew him back down into a full kiss, mingling the taste between their mouths until there was nothing left of it. With a firm but insistent hand, John pushed Laszlo onto his back and held him, deepening the kiss as much as he could. Laszlo nipped at his lower lip, teasing, causing John to break away in mild but pleasant shock.

To retaliate, he pulled Laszlo’s head to one side and sucked at the skin of his neck until his hips were rising off the bed, straining at something unseen and unfelt. Affecting a wicked grin, John laid a trail of kisses into the collar of the night-shirt, then over it—down Laszlo’s chest and belly, rucking up the hem as he went.

“Ah—” he tensed, the muscles in one lean thigh taut against John’s hand. “I’m not sure I’m in any shape…”

John hushed him. “Distraction,” he said. “From pain. Didn’t you say something like that?”

“In the broadest of—” he cried out again as John ducked quick as a snake to run his teeth along the inside of his thigh. “John,” Laszlo managed, “you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” John answered. “I’d like to assume you did, as well.”

Laszlo relaxed a little into his touch. “I did. Very much.”

“Then let me distract you.” John took in a deep breath. It was saturated with Laszlo’s alluring scent. Setting aside the fact that he had never before done what he planned to do—for a man, that was—he had always relished having Laszlo let go of some of his tightly-held control under his touch.

Trying to keep in mind the things he liked, and to remember the way Laszlo had done it at the inn, he pushed away the light fabric and took hold of Laszlo’s half-hard cock, guiding it to his mouth.

In return, he won a soft groan of pleasure and the tentative touch of fingertips on his scalp.

It was one thing to feel with his hand the small, erratic movements that brought a man to full hardness, but it seemed John could do nothing aside from hold still as Laszlo stiffened in his mouth. His first movements elicited more sounds from above, as potent a goad as any to continue. A taste like the teardrop he’d kissed away, only more dilute and bitter, met his tongue after a short while. On the whole, it felt a bit like John was exploring his own body from outside it—but somehow more real than reality. The thought made little sense inside his head.

He had once written an article for the _Times_ about opium smokers, some of whom described feeling removed from time when drugged, or even watching their physical forms from far above, sprawled on the Oriental cushions. Every description John could muster for this was an abstract, so he dismissed them in favor of sense: touch, taste, the sounds he brought forth.

Laszlo said something, a scraping, guttural phrase. Fingernails grown a little long scratched through John’s hair.

He didn’t want to stop to ask, so John only made a noise in his throat.

Doing so made Laszlo tense and gasp. “Very close,” he said, then uttered another strange word.

John recognized then that Laszlo had lapsed into German. The fact of it was curiously arousing.

A few seconds later, he ground out John’s name and a very understandable plea in English. Then he was biting back a cry, even though there was no one but John in the empty house to hear.

The sudden flood of warmth, strong in taste, took John by surprise. He swallowed on reflex, retched, swallowed again. Pulling away, he coughed against Laszlo’s bare thigh, leaving a patch of wetness. Feeling the burn of a flush suffuse his face, he sat up and drew his hand over his lips and chin. “Damn it all,”  he said, not yet daring a look up. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Laszlo said, fumbling with his bad hand to touch John’s arm, his grasp as weak as an infant’s.

John scowled. “I’ve embarrassed myself.”

Laszlo struggled to raise his shoulders, reached out with his stronger hand this time and pulled a red-faced John toward him. “It felt wonderful. I didn’t want to—to finish. You did so well.”

His formerly lusterless eyes now preternaturally bright, Laszlo stroked John’s face, his hair.

The finger-tips that slid over John’s lips were soft, appreciative, enticing. He grasped the hand and kissed it, acquiescing to the praise. When he let himself relax and settle onto the mattress again, Laszlo tried to kiss him, but he drew away. “I’ve just—” he started.

“I know,” Laszlo whispered. His hand was strong now at the back of John’s neck, drawing him forward. Allaying John’s reluctance, he kissed just as deeply and without reservation as he would before they’d...

Once again, John pushed away thought and surrendered. He would let the solid reassurance of Laszlo beside him quell his apprehension at the new, the dangerous and strange.

He lay next to furious warmth, urged on to bring himself to his own climax.

And he slept, when sleep came at last, curled against that same warmth, Laszlo’s twice-damaged arm resting softly on his flank. His dreams might as well have been free of terrors, too, for he would not remember them when he woke.

**Author's Note:**

> 1890s American slang is hysterical, y'all. 
> 
> hopper: bellhop  
> nipping: pick-pocketing  
> bats: crazy  
> bit o' jam: a pretty woman  
> phosphate: a soda, basically. flavored fizzy water  
> peery: curious, suspicious  
> louse house: seedy rooming house, essentially the 19th century New York equivalent of a roach motel  
> scratch: money  
> shin: to run, move quickly  
> crook the elbow: to drink, get drunk  
> "cut your stick": "shut up!" (an imperative)
> 
> A couple of historical notes:
> 
> the gauze: it was the 1890s when Robert Wood Johnson of American health care products company Johnson & Johnson began heat-sterilizing gauze. Needless to say, it helped with wound care. There were antiseptics, but antibiotics wouldn't be in wide use until the 1940s, starting in Europe.
> 
> Adam Dury's rifle: The Winchester Repeating Arms Company's 1873 model (Winchester 1873) was known as "The Gun that Won the West." Unfortunately, that probably meant "the gun that killed the most Native Americans." I do hope some day this country decides to acknowledge one of the world's largest ignored instances of genocide.


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